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Bormeo – Feeride Paradise or Illegal Drought Prone Nightmare?

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone has any experience of off piste skiing in Bormio? Looking at maps of the ski areas it looks like an absolute paradise, absolutely huge North facing areas from 3200m down to 1800m covered in couloirs, steeps, and potential powder fields, some straight from the lifts, others with an hour or so of skinning. The areas off the Vallalpe and Bormio 3000 lifts are what have caught my attention. However, searching the internet comes up with very little with only a handful of posts mentioning off piste skiing there. The official Bormeo website mentions two dedicated freeride zones but these seem to cover only a very small amount of the total terrain that looks to be available and there is suggestion that skiing outside of these zones is illegal although I can’t find anything official confirming this.

I’m also concerned that it may be in a fairly dry corner of the Alps and that perhaps this is why it doesn’t have a freeride reputation. Looking at snow history sites its recorded depths seem low compared to say Tignes or St Anton but I am always pretty wary of these sites as there is no guarantee that the recording methodology is consistent across different sites. If, for example, it received 25% less snowfall that Tignes for the same altitude I would view this as acceptable and probably worth a punt as I can’t image that stuff gets tracked out quickly there, if it received 50% less snowfall than Tignes then I wouldn’t bother visiting. So, it this the last undiscovered freeride paradise in the European Alps (which seems unlikely) or are there good reasons that its mountains aren’t delivering to their full potential?